The temperature and cooling age of the white dwarf companion to the millisecond pulsar PSR B1855+09

We report on Keck and Hubble Space Telescope observations of the binary millisecond pulsar PSR B1855+09. We detect its white dwarf companion and measure m(F555W) = 25.90 +/- 0.12 and m(F814W) = 24.19 +/- 0.11 (Vega system). From the reddening-corrected color, (m(F555W)-m(F814W))(0) = 1.06 +/- 0.21, we infer a temperature T-eff = 4800 +/- 800 K. The white dwarf mass is known accurately from measurements of the Shapiro delay of the pulsar signal, M-C = 0.258(-0.016)(+0.028) M.. Hence, given a cooling model, one can use the measured temperature to determine the cooling age. The main uncertainty in the cooling models for such low-mass white dwarfs is the amount of residual nuclear burning, which is set by the thickness of the hydrogen layer surrounding the helium core. From the properties of similar systems, it has been inferred that helium white dwarfs form with thick hydrogen layers, with mass greater than or similar to 3 x 10(-3) M., which leads to significant additional heating. This is consistent with expectations from simple evolutionary models of the preceding binary evolution. For PSR B1855+09, though, such models lead to a cooling age of similar to 10 Gyr, which is twice the spin-down age of the pulsar. It could be that the spin-down age were incorrect, which would call the standard vacuum dipole braking model into question. For two other pulsar companions, however, ages well over 10 Gyr are inferred, indicating that the problem may lie with the cooling models. There is no age discrepancy for models in which the white dwarfs are formed with thinner hydrogen layers (less than or similar to 3 x 10(-4) M.).